Nikki Haley on Saturday referred to as Aleksei A. Navalny, the outspoken Russian opposition chief, “a hero” and amped up the strain on former President Donald J. Trump to reply to the information of his dying. She mentioned Mr. Navalny had died by the hands of President Vladimir V. Putin and that Mr. Trump wanted to “reply to that.”
Talking with reporters exterior her rally at a park in Irmo, S.C., Ms. Haley praised Mr. Navalny for calling out Mr. Putin for corruption and fixing elections. She mentioned he had fled his nation solely to return “to battle the great battle.”
“After which he was arrested, and now Putin has accomplished to him what Putin does to all of his opponents — he kills them,” she mentioned, earlier than turning to Mr. Trump, her rival within the G.O.P. main. “And Trump must reply to that. Does he assume Putin killed him? Does he assume Putin was proper to kill him? And does he assume Navalny was a hero?”
Ms. Haley, the previous governor of South Carolina and a United Nations ambassador beneath Mr. Trump, has been operating on her international coverage expertise and has lengthy criticized her former boss over what she has described as his love of dictators and authoritarian leaders. She has solely continued to ratchet up the criticism of him as they head right into a main showdown in her house state on Feb. 24.
Mr. Trump has not but commented publicly on Mr. Navalny’s dying. On Saturday he did assault President Biden and mentioned in a publish on-line that “I’m the one one who can deliver Peace, Prosperity, and Stability like I did throughout my first time period. America will probably be revered and feared (if vital!) once more.”
On Friday, quickly after the information of Mr. Navalny’s dying broke, Ms. Haley went additional than most Republicans in attacking Mr. Trump for his previous remarks in reward of Mr. Putin. At her rallies since, she has underscored Mr. Trump’s cozy relationship with the Russian chief and sought to sound the alarm over his recommendations that he would encourage Russian aggression in opposition to U.S. allies in Europe.
On Saturday, she additionally addressed the news that Russia was creating a nuclear house weapon with the potential to destroy satellites, calling for the prevention of conflict in house.
Russian authorities introduced on Friday that Mr. Navalny, who was serving a number of sentences in Russia, had died in a jail contained in the Arctic Circle. President Biden has mentioned that U.S. officers didn’t have a full understanding of the circumstances, however that he believed that “there is no such thing as a doubt that the dying of Navalny was a consequence of one thing that Putin and his thugs did.”
Within the information convention on Saturday, Ms. Haley requested of Mr. Trump: “Why does he all the time facet with dictators?”
